Mambo Italiano
by The Very Last Valkyrie
Summary: Danny shares his personal mantra and Lindsay tries not to pull a Meg Ryan. Dantana.


**_This was inspired by some musing over pasta recipes, and also because I needed something cheerful after my last Dantana piece._**

* * *

**Mambo Italiano**

"Try some of this."

"What is it?"

"It's gnocchi."

"What?"

"What do they feed you at home, buffalo burgers? Try it."

"That's so good! What's it made from?"

"Potatoes."

"You're kidding me!"

"On my grandmother's life."

Lindsay Monroe laughed, leaning back in her chair and stretching out her legs. She had eaten at least seven different varieties of pasta alone tonight, not to mention four types of pizza and various other _delicatezzas italianas_, and it was debatable as to whether she would ever be able to move again.

Despite their bug banquet of a few weeks before, Lindsay had still been surprised when Danny had casually asked her to have dinner with him over a pile of bloodstained clothes and several GSR positive personal effects. At her raised eyebrow, he had quickly tacked on 'not as a date, Montana – I just overheard you talking to Stella about the whole not knowing what a cannoli was thing'. Nevertheless, she had been apprehensive of accepting to the point of rescinding her earlier yes and staying in with a pile of John Wayne movies...which would, on reflection, have been a mistake.

"How can you still eat?" She asked, awed, as he consulted the _dolce_ menu with practised ease.

Danny raised his head from the bilingual text describing the different types of dessert, and as his eyes met hers Lindsay flushed. What was it, she wondered, that gave blue or green or even grey eyes the power that common or garden brown could never manage? It wasn't that she _liked_ feeling as if she were being x-rayed – it was more a case that being a specimen under the microscope of one Danny Messer, detective third class made her feel...interesting. Important.

"_Mangiare per vivere,_ Montana," he said lazily, with a swift wink. "_E non vivere per mangiare._"

"Meaning?"

"Meaning live to eat, not eat to live. When you understand that food is a pleasure and not a necessity –" Danny shrugged, then beckoned to the waitress with one crooked finger and a devastating flash of a smile. "You've reached enlightenment."

"Culinary nirvana?"

"Boom."

Lindsay shook her head, taking a sip of wine in lieu of letting him tempt her into running rings around herself instead of ordering some tiramisu. Where she came from, boys talked like you were on a level right up to the point when you started filling a bra cup. Thereafter, you were held in the kind of esteem that made absolute frankness impossible, and even when in a relationship never quite managed to get back the easy familiarity of early childhood. But with Danny?

"Boom."

"You say something, Linds?"

She started. "What? No. I didn't."

When the dessert arrived, there were two forks on the tray beside it. Lindsay assured the waitress that they only needed one, and the older woman loudly and cheerfully admonished her for being too skinny while Danny nodded his head in a highly infuriating way, and his eyes sparkled. Lindsay was just about ready to down the entire bottle of wine and hide under the table by the time she'd left, but all her dinner companion could seem to do was chuckle to himself.

"Montana, you have to try some of this. It's like heaven food."

"I can't, Danny, I'm too full."

He held up one finger. "One bite, that's all I'm asking."

She sighed. "Live to eat, right?"

He grinned. "Yeah."

"Fine."

"C'mere."

It was around this point that Lindsay realised she might be about to do something very, very stupid – not only because Danny was carefully forking up what appeared to be half his dessert, but also because she'd declined the offer of another fork. _Not a date, huh?_ Her subconscious snickered. _Seems pretty date-like to me when you start feeding each other._ She tamped down on the self-flagellation, and decided to take the leap.

Lindsay leaned forward, opened her mouth, and was utterly blown away.

"Good?"

"Mmm-hmm. Oh God. Yes."

"Calm it down, Sally."

"So you agree that men and women can be friends without sex getting in the way."

Danny looked at her steadily, the lenses of his glasses only serving to make his eyes seem bluer. "It didn't exactly work for Harry and Sally, did it?"

"No," Lindsay agreed.

"But if you ever need anyone to breathe heavily down the phone at while talking about a cat in a garden –"

"You're my first call."


End file.
